Pontague Docks- Or that time I forgot to print out my character sheets.

 Last night I set up my game of Five Parsecs, only to realise I hadn't printed out my character sheet. So instead I took some pretty pictures.

Welcome to Pontague Docks: one of many smaller, privately owned shipping areas in Launia City. There are, of course, larger starports with better infrastructure, but places like Pontague Docks are great for small crews to find a job, find a cargo, and carry on flying. 

The Pelican is being restocked with water and other vital supplies. While Holmes and crew aren't planning on going anywhere, it is often more convenient to just live on ship while in port.

A private passenger liner. This craft is not space worthy and is used to ferry people around the hemisphere. 

Five Parsecs from Home - Turn 2.1. The first turn with the new Five Parsecs rules.

 Having gone back to their renegade patrons, the group was paid a few credits. This would be enough to cover the crew upkeep costs and to pay off a little bit of the debt on The Pelican. When checking out the battlefield they found what looked like a stash of jewellery that seemed quite unique. They decided to keep hold of it and put it out on the Net that it had been recovered. 

After consulting with each other, the crew decided to stay on Launia for a little while. With any luck they could earn enough with another couple of jobs to upgrade The Pelican. Launia has some well established shipyards and there is enough ship related infrastructure to make upgrading a starship cheaper. 

Aralay Brenko was sent out to find a job, which she managed to do. Augustus Holmes went to a local dive, in order to find someone to join the crew, he came back with a machinegun armed Lars Nicolau. Lars was looking to get paid and get off this planet asap, so it seemed like a good fit to him.

Aralay came back with a job from the Scappers Guild who needed help dealing with some pirates who were proving especially difficult and resourceful.

Left to right: Estelle Phillips, Augustus Holmes, Lars Nicolau. 

Left to right: Oslan Baratski, Aralay Brenko, Mao Yung-Zu

The job was simple: gather information on a shipment of important scrap parts, from a station that had a pirate problem. The idea was to speak to the attendant, get the information, then push through, past the pirates in order to bring this info to the Guild's contact across the city.

The crew came from the southern district, intent on quickly grabbing the important information and making off with it with minimal stress. The pirates, on the other hand, had other ideas. They wanted that scrap and would fight to get it.

Brenko and Mao were able to get the drop on the pirates and advanced up towards the west. The plan was to split into two teams and sneak through the cluttered freight yard, in order to meet up with the attendant.

Brenko has a Reaction value of 2, while the rest are on 1. So only two were able to move in the "Quick Moves" part. Next would be the enemy, then the rest of the team. For this game I changed all measurements into centimetres and while it was a bit fiddly moving my tiny figures around, it worked and meant I could have a nice, busy looking game area that fit in a 1x1 square.

The pirates advanced swiftly, keeping a tight formation, hoping to be able to hose any hostiles with enough fire to drive them off. The front left there is a sniper with a hunting rifle, while the front right has a pirate with a handheld flamethrower. In the back, third from the left is the leader, who is also known to the authorities and has a not insignificant number of warrants out for his arrest. If my crew eliminate him there is a reward. There is also a bounty out on any members of this pirate crew as they have been causing quite a few problems to a few organisations. 

Pirates are and Aggressive opponent, so they generally would always advance into combat, or advance to find targets. Heavy weapons (the kneeling sniper figure) would not move if they had LOS to a target. I get 1D3 credits for eliminating the leader, and 1D6 credits for winning a battle against these guys.

With the freight yard so cluttered, there was little room for line of sight. The crew and the pirates all advanced and closed in on each other. It was only a matter of time before bullets would be flying.

With no shooting they are all adding +2cm onto their moves as they are dashing.

Brenko made it unnoticed to the shipping containers, her plan was to dash over to the logs and again into slicing range! Her blade humming, ready to go.

These pictures might be in the wrong order.

Mao and Baratski dashed along the outskirts of the freight yard, while Phillips advanced along the northern edge. Lars was positioning himself to cover the entire area with machinegun fire and Holmes found himself a nice firing position nestled in cover.

The first shots rang out with Lars attempting to lay down some heavy fire. Unfortunately, the pirates not being in close range, and some having cover, he missed his shots, although one was pinned and dived deeper into cover.

Pinned is stunned. I just prefer the term pinned. 

Return fire from the pirates sent Lars scurrying for cover, but  there had been no blood spilt so far. 

It was at this point that I think realised I was doing shooting wrong. I wasn't adding the character's combat value to my attack roll. I was also rejecting any damage roll that wasn't 6 because I misread the rules. I just have to equal or go higher than their toughness value, which for pirates is 4.

The flamethrower-toting pirate decided to sneak behind the buildings, in order to surprise anyone who would try to advance up into close combat.

It was at this point I realised I had been playing the pirates wrong and not following the Aggressive AI properly. With no LOS they should be advancing max move. With LOS they should be advancing (to cover if possible) and shooting. I read that as advancing out of cover to new cover, or to the open no matter what. Their goal is to close the distance and brawl if possible.

Brenko's quick reactions allowed her to advance further, in the hope she can get her blades working on someone's face. She was, however, all out in the open! It is a good job for her that the pirates couldn't shoot for anything in this moment and some bullets bounced harmlessly around her.

Advancing out of cover, Holmes attempted to take down a pirate, but his shots went wide, leaving a handful of bullet holes in the rear of the train. Hopefully it would buff out...

Estelle Phillips had managed to sneak around the top and was hoping to hold off the pirates who were also sneaking around the back of the train.

Brenko advanced again, while the pirates laid down some withering fire, which was mostly ineffective ... mostly. Lars went down in a hail of bullets, clutching his chest, blood seeping through his fingers. He quickly stopped moving.

So upon figuring out how fire should really be, the first casualty was my newest recruit. Great. He is out of the battle and afterwards we will roll for his injury or death.

The flamethrower-toting pirate jumped out and tried to burn Brenko up, but launched the flames too high. It was ineffective. This may have had something to do with Brenko's sonic emitter, which works to disorientate opponents who are in close proximity. Meanwhile Mao leaned around the corner and blasted his shotgun. Two shots, to hits, two pirates went down in a flurry of buckshot. 

It absolutely had to do with Brenko's sonic emitter. Enemies within 5 get -1 on their hits. Quite a nice bit of tech. Brenko did no combat this game, so didn't get to take advantage of the Battle Visor she was wearing, which lets her reroll 1s. 

Holmes laid down some fire on the flamethrower. It was a scary weapon and he didn't want to be on the end of it! His shots struck true and the pirate went sprawling across the floor.

This was a quick, deadly exchange of fire. It was really cool to see it work.

Seeing the pirates huddling up to sneak past the train, Phillips advanced and threw a grenade. A puff of black smoke, a muffled boom, and all that was left were a couple of red smears on the side of the train and on the tarmac, as well as one remaining pirate who was rethinking her life choices. Two of the remaining three pirates rethought it enough to run away and tell the rest of the crew about what was happening. They would be back.

It was at this point that I remembered I should have been rolling for morale. I think I had missed one round of morale? I honestly can't recall. I took the risk and advanced Phillips, which meant throwing the grenade had a -1 penalty to hit, but because they were in the open, in close range, I went from needing a 3+ to a 4+ which I still got. Ironically Phillips had an Arm Booster, which gave +2 to grenade throwing range, meaning she didn't even need to move!!

Quick reactions again allowed Phillips to fire at the last remaining pirate with her shotgun. The pirate crumpled and fell, blood dripping through gloved fingers as they clutched at her chest. 

With no remaining pirates to worry about, Holmes and Brenko found the attendant and got the relevant information from him, the crew then picked up Lars and took him to a local med-centre were they had to spend 1₹ to get him through some emergency surgery. Oslan Baratski stayed at the freight yard and found 2₹ worth of scrap parts. These would sell easily on the grey market. The crew also managed to get their hands on another damaged Distraction Bot and a damaged grappling gun. These might be worth repairing, they might not be.

With Lars stabilised, the crew went over to their contact in the Scappers Guild. It was time to get paid. They managed to walk away with 4₹ along with an extra 2₹ for taking care of that particularly nasty pirate leader. A meeting with local lawmen earned the crew another 2₹ for the bounty on these pirates. It was time to regroup, rest, train up and decide what else to do next. Brenko also completed a side job trading some tech, which earned the crew another 2₹.

Meanwhile, across the city some pirates met. This would not do. The time would come where this off-worlder ship crew would have to pay. That time would be soon. Revenge would be swift, messy, and final.

Lars gained 1xp as he was a casualty. The others all gained 3xp as they held the field. Mao earned 4xp as he got the first kill. Mao spent 10xp on 1 Luck point. Baratski spent 7xp to improve her Toughness by 1. The rest must wait, although in the next campaign turn Brenko will train, earn 1xp and spend it all improving her Toughness or Combat. 

In total they earned 11₹ which will be useful to pay off a chunk of their ship debt. After one more mission I hope they will be able to buy a ship upgrade with a discount of 4₹ . They get a discount of 2₹ for being on a shipyard world, and another 2₹ for something they found last game. 

I really enjoyed this game. Having it all in one book helped. Changing the measurements to 1cm worked well and I had a really small sized game. The combat worked well once I figured it out. It felt like I could lose my team, which is scary and makes me think of XCOM Enemy Unknown and how sad I get when I lose soldiers in whom I have become invested.

Looking forward to next game.

Five Parsecs Campaign Turn 2. Communication Breakdown.

 Welcome back, a year later, for the continuation of my Five Parsecs campaign. I have been excitedly writing down the existing characters and rolling up three new characters. My crew is six humans all with various backgrounds. There are the original three characters from the first game, then the person who joined, and the other two grunts. Each of these are now a full character with a background and possible abilities. Some of the names changed though.

Augustus Holmes (Blue top, rifle)
Origin - Religious Cult
Motivation - Glory! Defeat the biggest and baddest!
Class - Hacker. Re-roll one hack/intrusion per mission
True Believer - On a BAIL result, move 6" towards nearest enemy.

Aralay Brenk (Red had, blades)
Origin - Primitive/Regressed/Out in the sticks
Motivation - The hunt for tech of any kind
Class - UCS agent. Add a goon with rifle on 1 or 6 on 1D6 if fighting mutants, dissidents, anarchists.
Counter Attach - May reroll when attacked in brawl.

Ward Roberts (Orange Armour)
Origin - Lower class mega city
Motivation - Order. Disorder is bad
Class - Bounty hunter. Find a single use patron on 1 or 6.
Free auto rifle

Oslan Baratski (hood and bag)
Origin - Industrial world. Resourceful but probably a filthy red.
Motivation - Power. Wants to be on top
Class - Trader. Roll twice on trade table and pick best.
Psionic - Premonition. Each campaign turn, pick one enemy and DON'T roll for it. OR pick one and roll twice.

Mao Yung-Zu (Oriental hat)
Origin - Military brat. High parental expectations.
Motivation - Freedom. Lots of space left in Fringe Space
Class - Traveller. Roll 1D6 on a new world to generate a patron.
Talent - Tough. Ignore first hit each game.

Estelle Phillips (mask and bag)
Origin - Dystopian hell hole
Motivation - Find the best tech
Class - Scoundrel (basically does nothing)
Lucky - When a bad thing happens, roll 1D6. On a 6 they escape with no ill effect.

A few months on the go and the crew of The Pelican were ready for a restock and refit. They also needed work, and besides, some time planetside would allow them to breathe air that hadn't been recycled countless times. This would be nice. 

Ward Roberts was still recovering from the gun wound from the scavenging job, and Augustus Holmes was assigned to guard the ship, local law enforcement being what it is. The rest went out to find a job and try to trade for some upgrades. Luckily they managed to find someone willing to pay them to do something, although it might be dangerous.  

In a break in the woods there lies a small, hidden enclave. Local law enforcement don't venture there out of either fear or due to the right cash going into the right pockets. Neither is good. Both put public trust in these lawmen at somewhere between zero and nil.

A small group of renegades who have been trying to stay below the radar, but one of them went missing a few months ago. They tracked their missing person down to a press gang, who basically kidnap people and sell them to any military or paramilitary organisation will pay. This led to a skirmish, and the press gang now feel like they can cash in, report the existence of this group and sell them all off. To avoid this, the renegades tasked the crew of The Pelican with destroying a communications array. It should be lightly guarded by a couple of armed gang members, but it was a small operation.

To begin, the crew advanced in two groups hoping to catch any defenders in a cross fire

Unfortunately they were too slow about it and one of the defenders caught them out in the open. He fired off a few rounds and hit Estelle Phillips...

 who crumpled and fell to the ground. Augustus Holmes promised to come back and check on her, if they survive that is.

Ward Roberts and Augustus returned fire and the enemy fell. Unsure if seeking cover or injured they stayed where they were just in case.

Meanwhile another ganger got caught in the open by fire from Mao. Nothing came of it though with the shots kicking up little plumes of dust and grit.

Another ganger attempted to flank the crew but took fire. It was also ineffectual but slowed his advance as he thought better of moving away from cover.

At the same time Roberts and Holmes took more fire from the ganger, who had shot Phillips. Holmes panicked and retreated behind a nearby clump of trees.

Another ganger advanced to get into better gun range, but took fire from Aralay Brenko and Oslan Baratski, going down in a hail of bullets and blood.

Another gang member came under fire from Baratski, panicked and retreated around the rocky outcrop. Brenko and Mao dashed up to close the distance and get behind the rocks.

Mao took fire from a ganger but it went wide, he still wanted to find cover though, just in case.

More shots rang out and Roberts took some hits, bullets punching through his armour. The trauma modules kicked in to try and save him as he led there bleeding.

The gang member responsible for the most carnage tried to advance on Holmes. Unfortunately for the ganger Holmes had rallied and opened fire first, knocking him back again.

The panicking ganger retreated further away from Brenko, especially considering she burst round the corner, handgun blazing! Slugs found another gang member and he toppled, unmoving to the floor, a red pool seeping out underneath him.

Brenko then charged up to the formerly panicking gang member, blade swinging! She forced him back, desperate to escape her humming blades. In the background Baratski managed to set up explosives on the communication array.

In an attempt to support Brenko and Baratski, Mao ran out of cover to charge over to the communications array. He took fire, panicked and ran back into the cover of the trees.

The earth shook as the explosives detonated, rendering the communications array unusable, and turning it into so much scrap metal! Mission accomplished, although it was not a cake walk. The remaining gangers ran, fearing the attention the explosion and resulting smoke plume may bring, while our hardy crew took a moment to take stock and check on their wounded comrades. 

Upon reaching Robterts, Holmes discovered it was too late. The trauma modules on his armour had not reacted well enough to save him, and the armour itself was too damaged to use without serious repairs. Phillips on the other hand while bleeding heavily was able to use the med-gel to seal the wound and has a big scar across her face. On the bright side she might be more useful to intimidate people now. 

The walk back to town was a sombre one. Ward Roberts would be missed. Brenko's comm unit beeped with an incoming call and their contact arranged a time and place to meet and get paid. 

I didn't enjoy this game very much. I feel like I rushed into it (with days and days of planning) and wasn't familiar enough with the combat rules. I had excitedly rolled up enough characters to have a full crew of 6, and then did all of the campaign turn stuff, ignoring that one of the crew probably shouldn't actually be allowed to be on this mission. I rolled up the mission which looked promising, although I forgot that the original target was to destroy a "nano fabrication machine" (communications array seemed better anyway). They had originally traded for a thing that basically allowed me to ignore 1S result in the game, which I should have done. That was all fun. I enjoyed it. But the game itself, I ended up referring to a badly printed PDF of the FiveCore 3rd edition rules, while trying to look at my character book, and remember all the benefits I had. It made me wish I was playing Starport Scum a little bit. In fact, why can't I play Starport Scum mechanics with the Five Parsecs campaign structure?

The combat in FiveCore is brutal. People go down quickly, whereas Starport Scum seems to be more about telling heroic stories with almost impossible to kill characters.

Mag Train and fir trees for the Ardennes.

 The trees are for the Ardennes, not the mag train. Although it might have stolen artwork hidden on it...

The round stands are far, far superior to the previous square stands. I will keep the square ones until I have enough of these to make them unnecessary. 

The Angel Barracks/CP Models grav/mag train. I have had this lying around for ages and decided to paint it up. The track is unpainted card from the box of the boardgame Dominion. I have since sprayed it and will figure out how to paint it in due time.

Ready for some thrilling heroics.

Jungle Troops, a Dinosaur and a Spider Mech walk into a desert...

These guys have been white with their flesh painted, based on 1 Euro cent coins for a good long while now. This week I decided to change their bases and get them painted. Likewise this GZG 15mm drone walker has been languishing in my model/painting tool box so I thought it was finally time to finish it. The dinosaur is just a fun thing for carrying loads through difficult terrain.

 

Let's Write Some Rules - Playtest 1

So here we are, a week or so since deciding I want to write my own rule set and here I am, having a first playtest of the combat mechanics, initiative system and morale system. There are no objectives, there is no story. Just some things plugging away at each other to see whether or not it is tedious, too easy, overpowered, or if it just plain doesn't work. I am not sure how to organise this. 

Team Blue:
4 squads of regular infantry
2 heavy tanks

Team Red:
4 squads of regular infantry
1 heavy tank
1 very light tank with an MLRS rack on top.

Infantry:
Move 6"
Attack 3D6 under 12". 2D6 over 12".
Defence 3D6
Morale 3D6
Count as a V. Light gun vs vehicles.

Heavy Tank:
Move 6"
Defence 1D6
Heavy Armour
Heavy Gun 5D6 under 20". 4D6 over 20".

Light Tank MLRS:
Move 10" (Which I forgot about.)
Defence 1D6
V Light Armour
MLRS 5D6 at all ranges. 

Rule notes:
All D6 rolls are successful on 5+. There are no modifiers at all to this. There are no crits or special fails. 

A bit of cover and a few units to battle it out. Let's see how it goes.

One of the first bits of action was some long range infantry vs infantry fire. Neither squad had cover, but because they were over 12" away, each was only rolling 2D6 while attacking and 3D6 while defending. So nothing stuck really.

Long range tank vs tank fire didn't hit the first time. Or it did but the defense roll stopped it, or the armour pen roll failed. This happened a couple of times.

The squishy MLRS vehicle launched a volley at a heavy tank. Lots of hits. But the AP of an MLRS volley isn't great against heavy armour in this iteration of the rules. I wanted it to be scarier to weaker things. I want heavy armour to be beefy.

So the MLRS did nothing vs the tank. I wonder if I should have some kind of area of effect mechanic for something like that. Like the hits are all vs all units in an area?

On the left are the 5D6 of the MLRS shots. Three hits (5+). Centre is the tank's defensive roll, representing PDC or something. It did nothing. The 3D12 are the penetration rolls but none of them were high enough to penetrate the armour. I quite like this system. Could I have a 2D6 roll to keep one kind of die?

Another tank vs tank shot.

One hit. Failed defensive roll. Failed to get higher than 8 to penetrate heavy armour with a heavy gun.

More tank combat. This time successful.

This time the penetration roll is higher than 8 so penetrates. Penetration means instant kill. I have no between mechanics. No disabled but reparable. Nothing like that. Just penetration = kill.

Here the MLRS successfully killed the heavy tank.

One hit. Failed defensive roll. Managed to get a 12 so penetrates. Lovely. 

Infantry combat. Each Team Red squad rolled 3D6, scored a couple of hits, then Team Blue failed the defensive rolls. The top squad took two hits, meaning if they get one more then they are dead, unless they unsuppress themselves. The bottom squad is pinned from one hit. If they get one more hit then nothing happens. If they get two more hits then they become suppressed. If they get three then they are dead. Becoming pinned just makes you combat ineffective for a while, but doesn't make you easier to kill in game terms. Just a target that can't move or shoot back.

Heavy tank vs squishy light tank. It was easy and to be honest should be expected if you get in the gun sights of a heavy gun.

Here are the rolls. Penetrated with all three hits. Maybe there is something there, where multiple penetrations are needed? Not sure. if the Light tank had been equipped with improved PDCs it could have stopped some of the hits coming through. But upgrading vehicles is something I need to look at and consider making rules about how many of each unit you can have or how to purchase upgrades. Not there yet.

Killing a suppressed unit was easy. I feel like that was the right way for it to be. If your squad can't defend itself and only allow one hit through then they sort of deserve to be knocked out.

There was quite a lot of this: infantry unit shoots at pinned infantry. Score some hits. Pinned infantry roll defensive roll and cancel enough so that nothing happens. Maybe a pinned unit should have -1D6 of defensive rolls? That is worth looking at. Pictured is the elusive triple-hit-all-defensive-rolls-fail kill.

So it is rare, but it is something that is technically possible. I liked that. I mean many systems have the critical hit system. In Horizon Wars if I score a critical hit against light infantry then they are instantly killed because I choose where the damage goes and I put it on their 1A score.

This was the most surprising of all. Infantry managed to penetrate (roll of 12 on 1D12) the heavy armour. Remember that infantry default to count as V. Light gun when firing vs vehicles. I had multiple infantry firing at this tank before it happened. 

Maybe I should have some sort of close assault rules. Or maybe I should have their gun category be higher when closer. All things to think about.

Notes and observations:

There was quite a lot of infantry fire that had little to no effect. Firing and getting ONE hit against an already pinned squad does nothing. This happened quite a lot so I didn't even bother rolling the defensive rolls. One possible change is that each additional hit increases a unit from pinned to suppressed. But on the other hand, that would kill them very quickly. It was easy to get one hit and pin them. It proved much more difficult to suppress and kill a squad. 

Rallying. I decided that each 5+ on a rallying roll removed a pin marker. Suppressed units had two pin markers. So regular infantry rolling 3D6 were able to completely recover from being suppressed, although this only happened once or twice once I changed the rule. Otherwise I could have played it as suppressed units have -1D6 morale dice, making it harder to completely unpin with one successful 5+. I quite like the idea of each 5+ removing one pin marker, so while possible to go from suppressed to fine, it is harder.

Round beginning rallying. Rallying 1D6 units was cool as there were some units that didn't get rallied. Also, Player 2 would be able to rally any units pinned/suppressed by the first two units of Player 1. It seemed to balance out. 1D6 might have to change with larger games. Although is this game meant to be designed for larger games?

Heavy gun vs infantry in open. Rolling 5D6 against infantry in the open did not kill them very easily. They got pinned quite a bunch, but I was surprised at how long they lasted before finally being taken out. There were seriously several rounds of fire before they finally went down. 

Tank vs Tank combat. It seems fine. Roll a bunch of D6 and you might get hits, then you might roll the armour penetration roll. There was a close call and a couple of misses. I wonder if heavy gun vs heavy armour with a Pen of 8 (on 1D12) is too easy. The very light armour was exactly as squishy as it was meant to be. The MLRS was quite good, although it wasn't really designed to penetrate the heavy armour. 

Infantry vs Tank combat. Infantry count as Very Light Gun vs tanks. I mean, I assume they have some sort of man-portable rockets or something that are not very effective. It was very hard to penetrate the heavy armour (12 on 1D12) but in the end one of them got through the final tank. 

I will play some more but I am actually quite pleased with how they play right now. I may well leave it as it is for the next game to see whether there are other tweaks to be made.

Things to think about
Some sort of area of effect rules for MLRS and perhaps other explosive ordinance. There are no artillery rules as such.

That unpinning mechanic. I like it, but there might be a better way.

Morale for tanks. This has been flat out ignored, but I don't know if it has a place in these rules. But it seems stupid to have it for infantry and not tanks.